word | spirit | world | church
I am pro ‘symbolic’ reading of the Bible. This goes by a few different names, which aren’t entirely contiguous with each other: typology, spiritual reading, the four senses, allegory, maximalism, and more. These things aren’t the same, and they might not all even really be the same neck of the woods, but they are all… Continue reading Bad symbolic reading
There’s probably a lot to be said about using commentaries to prepare preaching, but I’m going to address one very narrow aspect: how I’ve developed a way of knowing which commentaries to regularly consult. I’m a pastor but not employed by the church, I preach approximately monthly and so don’t have the luxury of lots… Continue reading Developing a ‘canon’ of commentaries
We need to learn to play in the Bible’s text. I’ve touched on this in an article about the way I read the Bible with others, but I’m convinced that what we need to learn if we want to revive our reading of the Bible is the freedom to try things out in discussion. The… Continue reading Playing in the text
The Bible starts with seven words. Then the second sentence has fourteen words. Then there are seven paragraphs each describing a day in this week of seven days. The seventh of these includes three parallel seven word phrases. None of this is an accident. In our modern day with our modern eyes it can look… Continue reading Carving Time
At the end of 2019 everyone had a books of the decade list. A few friends of mine shared theirs with each other, which gave me a good list of reading material, and a book group span out of that discussion. It’s more recently morphed into a group that reads old Christian works that we… Continue reading 9 books that changed me
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